Linda Williams recognises that contemporary debate surrounding the sexually explicit image has typically centred upon ‘the feminist rhetoric of abhorrence’ – a factor that has permitted only for the question ‘of whether pornography deserves to exist at all’. Noting that this discussion is unhelpful in contextualising or understanding any of the generic elements of the sex film, the author concludes by stating, ‘I wish to ask just what the genre is and why it has been so popular.’ In her well-regarded book Hardcore, Williams discovers the divergence and variety between sex films but also ‘the difficulty hardcore films have in figuring the visual “knowledge” of women's pleasure’. It is this later point that the author pays particular attention to in her study – especially as regards the ‘money shot’ of male ejaculation that often signifies the conclusion of sex scenes in the hardcore sex film: what Williams dubs the ‘frenzy of the visible’. The author notes, referring to softcore productions such as Lorna, ‘Sexploitation producers were so terrified of resembling hardcore pornography – and they did constantly skirt prosecution for obscenity in their vulnerable position outside the Code – that they would frequently displace the energy of genital coupling into a more generalised orgasmic abandon of the female body.’

While Williams distinguishes between the two types of films – using sexploitation to affirm simulated on-screen intercourse and hardcore to relate to the eventual unhiding of the sex act – there is still a notable aesthetic cohesion between the two despite the fact that one is ‘real’ and the other is not. Indeed, the ‘orgasmic abandon of the female body’ that Williams sees in softcore films such as Vixen is also present in the later hardcore releases (Behind the Green Door has a lengthy sequence of intercourse that finalises by studying, in close-up, the orgasmic face of Marilyn Chambers – penetration is not even in shot). The evasion of showing penetration does, as the author confirms, force choreography of simulation in films such as Vixen, but – similarly – by having the freedom of showing erections, ejaculation and so forth, later sexploitation filmmakers still struggle to evoke an on-screen stylistic signifier of pleasure.